Allen Laseter’s animations combine working instinctively with having a lot of fun

Allen Laseter, an animator and illustrator based in Nashville, Tennessee, originally studied film concentrating on directing and cinematography. Post-graduation, he was making live action videos and “eventually an animation job kind of randomly fell into my lap”.

Despite never studying animation or illustration at school, something clicked with Allen. “I knew just enough about After Effects and was desperate enough for work that I decided to take on the project, despite being under qualified.” This leap of faith meant Allen “had to do a ton of learning on the job”. Yet, “by the time it was done, I’d realised that maybe my strengths and instincts were more suited to animation,” he tells It’s Nice That . Following on from his animation revelation Allen began to teach himself, “actively seeking out that kind of work until I’d phased out all live action work and was doing exclusively animation,” he explains. “This was about four years ago and I’ve been illustrating and animating ever since.”

Over the past few years Allen has created numerous animation shorts, from Netflix Recommends to a brilliant Ted-Ed animation on Will winning the lottery make you happy?, and is currently working with studio Wonderlust “on a teen mental health” short, alongside a short personal film of his own. Each of these animations adapt his illustration style dependent on the brief, but a loose and carefully chosen coloured layers is visible in each.

“My projects usually start with a script that someone hands over to me,” says the animator of his process. “I like to start by reading it repeatedly until it feels like I’ve got a really good handle on it, and then spend time just thinking about it without touching a pen.” After drawing roughs, “visual ideas without worrying about aesthetic,” Allen begins to generate a look and feel that “will bolster the conceptual thinking, which usually just involved trying a bunch of different things until something feels right”.

This method of waiting until it feels right pays off consistently when looking at Allen’s work, enhanced by “working on a very tight timeline that requires me to work more instinctively,” but by always having fun with the project too.

Big Finds a Trumpet is about a happy character called Big who annoys his friend Little with a trumpet he finds. “It’s about relationships… and basically the fact that the people you like most can sometimes be the most annoying,” says London-based Dan Castro who created the animated short.

Given a completely open brief by Columbia Records for The Shins’ latest video, Half a Million, directing duo Lamar+Nik took the chance to make something they’d always wanted to make. “We always had this idea of a sticker trail being animated, but the surroundings remaining live-action,” explains Jesse Lamar High, one half of the duo. “We hadn’t seen it before, and there’s something really fun about taking mundane things and making them exciting. Plus it’s accessible to everyone. It’s almost as if you and your friends are going around one day putting stickers in unexpected places.”

Big Buddy Blue tells the story of a trucker and his motorised best friend living their lives on the open road. Created by Zurich-based collective Team Tumult, the animation is part of a non-commercial initiative from Freitag, the manufacturer which creates a range of bags using the recycled tarpaulin from large lorries. The brand asked five different teams of animators to tell the story of “Freitag – from truck to bag” in completely different ways. “With our story, we tried to show that every Freitag bag already had a previous life which reflects the uniqueness of the final product and the wild soul that inhabits all of their bags,” explains Team Tumult.

Working in Tel Aviv and London, animator Daniela Sherer has lent her skills for The School of Life’s latest lesson that tackles the subject of forgiveness. Daniela has created shorts for the institution in the past and here she’s been tasked with visualising how integral forgiveness is for the continuation of social life.

Tel-Aviv-based illustrator and animator Yuval Haker has created an animated music video for Israeli musician Alon Eder’s track I Am Sex. The song was recorded entirely on an 80s style Casio organ and deals with sex, intimacy, love and anxiety. The American-British-Israeli animator created the video as part of his graduation project at the Bezel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and was given “complete artistic freedom” to interpret the artist’s song.

“Ever wondered how rad people are so rad?” asks animator Adam Black’s new film. “Now, being rad is easier than ever! Simply follow these steps and you too could be one of those rad people out there.” How To Be Rad opens with meditations on what defines a “rad” person from a selection of disembodied voices accompanied by a chaotic but mesmerising, array of morphing part-human, part-Frankenstein bodies.